How to Find Fish at Cape Sable, ENP

by John Kumiski

You want to know how and where to find fish at Cape Sable, in Everglades National Park. You came to the right place! The beaches on the Cape itself,  Lake Ingraham (located behind Cape Sable), the East Cape Canal, the Mid Cape Canal, Little Sable Creek, and those nameless creeks around East Cape, provide a wealth of world class angling opportunities in an area perhaps five miles square.

Redfish, sheepshead, snook, tarpon, seatrout, jack crevalle, snapper, drum, several species of sharks, and many other finny creatures call this area their home. Some are year round residents, others are there at least part of the year. This piece takes a look at each of the spots mentioned above and examines how to fish each of them in some detail.

The Beaches from East Cape to Middle Cape

The beach for fishing stretches for about five miles from East Cape to Middle Cape. More beach then extends from Middle Cape ten miles more out to Northwest Cape and beyond. With any kind of strong west or south wind the beach between East Cape and Middle Cape is very exposed, the water gets all muddy, and fishing dries up. But when weather conditions allow it, some excellent fishing can be had right from this beach.

The simplest fishing happens at the rip at Middle Cape. Stick a sand spike into the sand, put a shrimp on the hook, cast your line out, and drink a cool one while waiting for some action. A quarter ounce piece of lead will hold the bait down. You'll catch snapper, sheepshead, black drum, redfish, and other species (catfish and rays!) this way. Exchange the shrimp for a live finger mullet and jack crevalle, snook, seatrout, an occasional tarpon, and various species of sharks become your prey.

You may prefer a more aggressive approach. Tie on any of the following lures- the 52MR series Mirrolure, the DOA Bait Buster (deep runner), the Rat-L-Trap, Bagley's deep sinking Finger Mullet, or your own personal favorite, and walk along the beach and cast. Fly tackle with a floating or intermediate line and a good sized streamer will work too. Either way, keep your eye peeled for redfish or snook cruising along the beach. Any fish doing this is looking for a meal. If you see him first and present your lure properly he's probably yours.

From about Thanksgiving until well after Christmas, big schools of sizable jack crevalle work along the beach. You can wear yourself and your tackle out, if not right from the beach, then with a boat a little distance off of it. Look for excited congregations of terns, gulls, and/or frigate birds working off the beach. A school of jacks probably has a ball of bait pushed up to the top, and are churning it to a froth.

Last Thanksgiving there were huge numbers of roe mullet working along the beach. These mullet brought in all kinds of predators, including some truly large sharks. With the right tackle (read HEAVY) you can catch these brutes from the beach, especially around dark and into the early evening. Use a mullet for bait, and be sure to bring wire to use as leader material.

You may well see tarpon rolling off the beach. Although usually you need a boat to reach these fish, sometimes you can hook up while standing on the beach. The best baits are live finger mullet, Bagley's Finger Mullet, or brown streamer flies with a touch of orange. Black streamers are also in excellent taste.

Although this approach is not particularly popular, it certainly can be effective. You can troll for snook along the beach between East Cape and Middle Cape. Zigzag in and out as you follow the beach. Drone spoons, big ones, and big floating/diving plugs like the Rapala or the Bomber Long A can be deadly. This only works when the snook are here, obviously. Expect a surprise or two!

You can camp on the Cape. It's probably the finest place to camp on the eastern seaboard. While camped here you can fish both day and night, and easily fish the rip at dawn and dusk, the best times of day.

Lake Ingraham

As in many other good sized bodies of water, finding fish in the lake can be difficult, especially for someone who has never before fished it. Here's the information that will lead to more success to those fishing the lake.

When you visit the lake is probably the most important factor in learning how to fish it. Although five miles long and a mile across in some places, much of the lake is extremely shallow. The water tends to be murky and the bottom consists entirely of soft, dark ooze. It's an easy place to get stuck in, and even experienced Ingraham anglers will occasionally find themselves high and dry, stranded on a mudflat by a swiftly falling tide.Moon phase plays an important role here too, since the more extreme tides occur around the new and full moons.

The best days to visit the lake are around these moon phases. The best time to visit is on a low outgoing tide. While the water is low you can see the contour of much of the bottom, important information to remember when the water comes back up. Should you manage to get stuck, the water will start rising soon anyway, freeing the boat again. And, at low tide much of the area in which fish swim during high tide is dry, forcing them into the relatively few remaining wet spots. In essence, low tide concentrates the lake's fish, making them easier to find.

The lake is connected at each end to the sea. At the south end, the East Cape Canal stretches from the lake to Florida Bay. At the north end, the much shorter Mid Cape Canal similarly connects the lake to the Gulf of Mexico. Stakes mark the (very shallow) channel across the lake from one canal to the other.

Although both of these canals are excellent fishing spots in their own right, at the moment we are only interested in the lake itself. At either end, where the canals join the lake is where it is deepest. This is where your explorations should begin.

Since the water is murky, try to appeal to more than one of the fish's senses. You can use smell to your advantage by dunking shrimp on the bottom. You may prefer using artificials, and shrimp tipped jigs work really well in the deeper areas. You'll see quite a few guide boats in here and this is their bait of choice by a wide margin. Get the jigs down near the bottom and work them slowly. Be prepared to lose a few as there are plenty of snags. Noisy plugs like Rat-L-Traps are another good choice. Again, this lure appeals to more than one sense.

Fish around the mouths of the feeder creeks, near drop-offs, and along the overhanging banks. Expect the unexpected- anything might take your offering. If fishing is good here, milk it! If nothing is forthcoming work your way up into the lake.

As you work into the lake, it quickly gets shallower. Switch to a lure which sinks more slowly. A lighter jig, or the scented DOA shrimp, or a noisy plug with a slower sink rate, for example the 52 MR Mirrolure, will all work. Flies with rattles will work, too. Fish the mouths of the feeder channels where they empty into the main channel. If you can, pole your boat up into these feeder channels. Oftentimes redfish will be up in these creeks as far as they can go, out of the boat traffic of the main channel. Although they are usually rather nervous due to the skinny water, they will usually hit a well presented lure. As always, keep your eyes and ears open for the sights and sounds of feeding fish while you explore these shallow creeks.

If you started at low outgoing tide, soon the water will start gushing into the lake through the canals. Work your way up these feeder channels, using the rising water to help push the boat. The fish will disperse all over the flats as soon as the water is high enough, so take advantage of the low water as long as you can.

As the water covers the flats, poling or drifting can be practiced successfully. Poling is usually a directed search- the anglers look for redfish waking in the shallow water, or working along the shoreline casting to stumps, blowdowns, and other structure for snook.

Although the tipped jigs will still work, surface plugs produce consistently under these conditions and are much more exciting to use. I have even sightfished to large blacktip sharks on shallow flats in the lake, using poppers to elicit some savage and breathtaking strikes. Usually though, snook and reds are a more likely target.

Drifting across the flats blindcasting will produce plenty of fish too. Although this technique tends to produce more seatrout, reds, snook, and other species are always a possibility. On one our trips to the lake my son Maxx had a magic touch with the jacks, using nothing more fancy than a red and yellow trout tout. I still haven't figured out who was tougher on who, Maxx on the fish or the five pound jacks on five year old Maxx!

As the water keeps coming up you can choose to continue searching for fish by sighting them first, or can continue drifting. I prefer to sightfish as long as I can, since before long the water will be too deep to see anything any more and drifting and blindcasting or plugging the shoreline will then be the only possibilities anyway.

After the six hours or so of rising water the tide will top out and will start to ebb, flowing the other way. Now is the time to start working quickly out of the shallow areas. If you get stuck near the top of an outgoing tide you will be there for a long time. You'll see quickly after arriving at the lake that getting out and pushing is not an option either, the oozy mud on the bottom being soft, deep, sticky, and smelly.

At the northeast corner of the lake the water is fairly deep and if the wind allows drift after drift can be made along the shoreline. Casting to this deep bank will lead to catches of snook, reds, and all of the other types of fish mentioned above. You may well see tarpon rolling in the vicinity too, and in the late spring and early summer some bruisers show up. Bagley's Finger Mullet is the best lure for tarpon that I have ever used. Don't go to the Everglades without several.

At this same end of the lake several creeks empty into it. Of course these are prime areas to work on a falling tide, since the predators wait in eddies and behind snags for easily caught snacks to wash by in the current. Work these places well.

If you enjoy fishing marathons you can fish Lake Ingraham from low tide to low tide and probably catch a dozen or more species of fish, some of which could easily be in the double digit weight class and which may hit three digits. On the other hand, you may want to try fishing in the canals.

The East Cape Canal

On bad weather days you will see this canal loaded up with boats, many of them guide boats. You can catch a ton of fish here, but the best fishing comes from using bait, both shrimp and live finger mullet. Tipped jigs work too, and plugs will sometimes produce. The DOA Bait Buster can also be deadly.

The best places to fish in the canal are quite obvious. Where the canal empties into Florida Bay, especially on the east side, can be good. As you travel up the canal, you will see creeks emptying into the canal on both sides. The first creek on the west side is especially productive. Tarpon often roll here. A livelined mullet will garner some awesome strikes. If you fly fish, the small tarpon right along the bank will sometimes take a well presented fly.

As you continue up the canal, it makes a 45 degree curve toward the northeast. On the west side right here another small canal enters. This is the entrance to the Bear Lake Canoe Trail. You can enter and go up to the plug, or fish at the mouth of this little canal. It's best when there's some current.

Continuing up the canal, there are some creeks on the left side. They deserve some exploration if there's enough water to get in them. Redfish in particular sometimes sit in very shallow water up in these creeks, sunning themselves on cooler winter days.

Finally, at Lake Ingraham there's a good hole on the south bank where snook like to loiter.

Middle Cape Canal

The Middle Cape Canal fishes like the East Cape Canal. It's much shorter. On the lake end there's a deep hole on the south side, and a hole and two creeks entering on the north side. Both of these spots are productive.

On the gulfside there are a lot of fallen trees along the banks that eventually turn into the beaches of Middle and Northwest Cape. Casting among these snags with any kind of noisy plug or fly will produce redfish, snook, and some surprises. You need a half tide either way, with good water movement along the bank.

When the fishing in either of these canals is going to be good you'll know. Bait will be moving, pelicans will be diving from their roosts in the mangroves, and tarpon and jacks will be feeding.

The Creeks of East Cape

West of the East Cape Canal, but before reaching East Cape, a navigable stream enters Florida Bay. During the winter you can often find tarpon rolling in this creek. The only thing I have ever gotten them to strike is a Bagley's Finger Mullet, in one of the natural mullet finishes.

If you follow this stream up you will come to a smaller version of Lake Ingraham. It's really shallow, so enter only on a rising tide. I have sightfished here with some success for redfish and snook. I've also seen sharks here.

Little Sable Creek

When you enter Lake Ingraham from the Middle Cape Canal you will observe a creek heading off to the northeast at the back corner of the lake, when the lake itself curves off the other way. This is Little Sable Creek. If you have a small boat you wouldn't mind scratching and you have a taste for adventure, this is an excellent place to explore.

The creek itself is reasonably deep. You can maybe run through on plane, but don't leave anything sticking up beyond the top of the gunwales, especially fishing rods. Be prepared to duck!

The ponds in the back are quite shallow. Once again, only enter on a rising tide, as early into it as you can. Once the water starts dropping, get out immediately.

I usually have excellent success back in these ponds. When the water is low you will see a lot of redfish, some snook, and many sharks. You need highly developed stalking skills but can sightfish in the skinny water. As the tide rises, switch to some kind of lure that makes noise. Surface lures are excellent. The water is usually pretty muddy. You can't see the fish any more, and want to call them to the lure with its sound.

You can follow the creek all the way to its other end, out on the other side of Northwest Cape. This is a trip of about eight miles. If you do go back here, be especially sure to bring some insect repellant. The bugs can be nasty.

Northwest Cape

I haven't ever fished Northwest Cape much. On my few attempts I've never had much success, and there's never been much need. When I go out to the Cape I usually camp on Middle Cape, and there's more than enough better looking places to fish around there. If you find a honey hole up there, let me know! I'd love to hear about it!

Conclusion

So I've told you all you need to know to find fish around Cape Sable in Everglades National Park. All you need now is some experience! No matter what the weather, no matter what the tide, this information and a little bit of prospecting will lead to a successful trip! Good luck!

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This article was written by John Kumiski of John Kumiski Outdoors and Travel. Contact him at his website www.johnkumiski.com or via email at john@spottedtail.com. Copyright 2007 John Kumiski.

John Kumiski 's most recent fishing guidebooks are How and Where to Catch Redfish in the Indian River Lagoon System (Argonaut Publishing Company), and Fishing Florida's Space Coast (Argonaut Publishing Company).

John Kumiski's newest book is Redfish on the Fly- A Comprehensive Guide.

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Copyright © John Kumiski. 2007